Running Head: HAIR WE GO AGAIN 1

Hair We Go Again: Organic Alternatives to Oceanic Oil Spills

Jacquelyn- Aurora M. Garcia

First Colonial High School

Abstract
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This paper will discuss how the prevalence of oil spills came to be as well as the laws, or the lack

thereof, that creates regulations to keep mass catastrophes from happening which includes the

requirement that it will be cleaned up accordingly. In regards to the clean up requirement, this

paper will talk about the negative effects that come with the original cleaning methods along

with how they work and who’s at risk when they are conducted. The alternatives to the original

cleaning solutions are a much safer solution like peat moss, hair and plant based chemicals which

should be taken into account when choosing a method to clean up alongside the original

methods.

Hair We Go Again: Organic Alternatives to Oceanic Oil Spills

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Here we go again with the constant re-pollution of our ocean after millions of gallons of

oil has already been spilled into it. Throughout the decade, there have been a numerous amount

of oil spills that, in all, equals to millions upon millions of gallons of oil in the ocean. The

spilling of the oil into the ocean isn’t the main problem; it’s the methods that are being used to

deal with them in order to clean up the mass oil spills. The ocean makes up seventy percent of

the earth, because it covers more than half of our world protecting and restoring it should be a

priority rather than allowing the widespread pollution to affect it (US Department of Commerce,

& National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2013, June). Companies that are

responsible for the spill tend to use cleaning methods that do more harm than good for the

environment. When millions of gallons that have contaminated the ocean have done so much

damage already, there is no need to add more chemicals into the ocean to clean it up; instead,

with using developing environmentally safe alternatives to clean up the spills, it would

significantly decrease the amount of oil present as well as not doing further harm to the ocean.

There are several other alternatives that could be used to clean up mass oil spills such as peat

moss, human hair, and plant based chemicals. Although these are still developing alternatives,

these methods have very promising results with little repercussions to the environment as a result

of several tests that were ran in previous years. These alternatives are overall better for the

environment, and based on the research that has been done on them, they have a little effect on

the environment in comparison to the normal methods that are being chosen to clean up mass

spill. Oil companies should resort to using organic alternatives to clean up oil spills such as peat

moss, hair, and plant based chemicals for the restoration and stabilization of the ocean.

History of Oceanic Oil Spills

According to a 2011 article by CBS News, there has been a countless amount of oil spills,
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because they apparently happen “ all the time” (Keteyian, A. (2011, April 1). Most of the public

aren’t aware that in all actuality oil spills really do happen more often than shown on the news.

And to attest to that statement, in 2018 alone there have been 73 oil spills worldwide, of those

73, the U.S holds some responsibility for 32 of them. But those were the only reported oil spills

that have happened in 2018, it is unknown as to whether or not there is anymore that have

happened and weren’t reported (Wikipedia. (2018, December 08). There was a time where the

world is not dependable on fossil fuels, but as people started discovering other alternatives to

help power their communities, they turned to fossil fuels to run practically everything. Oil spills

weren’t a big problem till both developed and undeveloped countries the turned to fossil fuels to

run their countries. Oil was and is the fastest growing industry ever since it first became popular

in the nineteenth century (History (2018, August 21). From then on the business skyrocketed and

became one of the most successful other than technology. The gross domestic product of the oil

industry, also known as the oil and gas industry, is between $75 to $85 trillion (Investopedia.

(2018, September 13). Assuming that there is no stopping the dependability and popularity of the

oil industry, the world will keep using this resource till eventually there is none left. Most oil

spills go unnoticed unless they cause a mass disturbance to the public's health. Then once it’s a

threat to the public’s health the environmental concerns come up soon after.

Deepwater Horizon BP Oil Spill

In April of 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded resulting in millions of oil being leaked

into the Gulf of Mexico. Because of the amount of oil that was spilled, it quickly became one of

the biggest and most expensive oil spills that has ever happened in U.S. history. The reason why

the rig exploded was because as the rig was drilling down deeper as far as 18,000 feet in to the

continental shelf it came across natural gas which then made the rig explode. The cores that were
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supposed to keep the structure stable, were in fact too weak to support an explosion of that

magnitude. After the explosion, 200 million gallons of oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico

making it the largest spill to be recorded. Because the amount of oil that was leaked is so great,

that means that the amount of time it’ll take to clean it up would be even greater. Not just one

method for cleaning up this large of a spill would work, and if it did, it would take a countless

amount of time and effort to complete. So what was decided is that a combination of booms,

dispersants and in-situ would be able to clean up a spill as catastrophic this one (Pallardy, R.

(2018, April 13). Like any other environmental disaster, there was some pressure that was placed

onto BP by the public pushing for them to clean up their mess faster because the oil rig was

forty-one miles away and depending on the wave conditions it would make its way fast to the

shoreline. The clean up efforts made by the companies were working fast to get the oil out of the

ocean but the risks that they put the workers and environment through in the end was a

questionable decision.

Port Arthur Oil Spill

In the 2010 Port Arthur oil spill on January 23, 2010, two large ships crashed, one of

them being an oil tanker that was holding thousands of gallons of oil. The other boat ended up

crashing into the oil tanker and piercing deep enough to eventually spill 450,000 thousand

gallons of oil into the port. In order for the port to contain as much as oil into one place as they

could, they put multiple booms (CNN. (2010, January 25). Not all the oil was accounted, only

ten percent of the oil that was spilled was collected because some of it evaporated or wasn’t

collected as the booms were establishing a perimeter to contain the oil. About 500 responders

worked long hours to help keep the oil from spreading to nearby shorelines were there is a lot of

wildlife that could be at risk (NBC News Associated Press. (2010, January 25). The owner of the
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Greek vessel that crashed into the oil tanker vessel, Nicos I.V, pleaded guilty in court and was

fined four million dollars and was also put on probation for four years (Stickney, K. (2018,

November 28). Other than the responders placing booms to contain the oil, they also had several

skimmers for the actual clean up method that was used for this particular spill that is able to suck

up and collect the oil (NBC News Associated Press (2010, January 25).

Original Cleaning Methods

Companies choosing to clean up the oil spills that they’ve caused is better than them just

leaving it alone. Waiting for the oil to naturally disperse and decompose by itself could take a

countless amount of years only to either sink to the bottom or rise to the surface and pose a threat

to the health of both the marine life and human life. To even clean the oil with the regular

methods is a process that could take multiple years and millions of dollars spent. Although the

original cleanup methods are fast and somewhat efficient, the amount of risks that the workers as

well as the environment are put through is not worth it with the little success that comes with the

end result. The cleanup process solely depends on the type of oil that is spilled, amount of oil

spilled, and the clean up method chosen.

Dispersants

Millions of gallons of toxic chemicals were dumped into the ocean and it’s not at actual

oil spills. Dispersants are known to be one of the easiest and fastest ways to clean up oil spills.

But that’s because they are hiding the problem in small particles and letting them sink to the

ocean floor. Dispersants are one of the easiest clean up methods to manufacture because they are

able to be produced in large quantities and they are somewhat easy to make on the spot when a

large scale oil spill happens. Throughout the years, there have been numerous oil spills and the

companies tend to use a method that distributes large amounts of absorbent plastic to clean up
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the spill. This method doesn’t reduce the amount of oil that is in the ocean but, it coats each

particle of oil similar to that of soap. They work with constant wave action that mixes the

dispersant in with the ocean. From there the coated oil particles float down to the bottom of the

ocean (Overton, E. (2018, November 19). There are many negative environmental factors that

come up because of the large mix of the dispersants into the ocean. Not only do dispersants

greatly impact the marine ecosystem, it can also affect people's lives, especially those that live

near the coasts. When the marine life come in contact with toxic chemicals, such as the ones

found in dispersants, it can decrease fishes life expectancies, increase death rates in coral reefs,

permanently damage sea turtles organs, and if birds get the oil on their wings they have a higher

risk of hypothermia and early death. As for people who live near or on the coast, it can affect

regular bodily function in organs, also a higher risk to diseases, and even early death (Center for

Biological Diversity, n.d). Companies believe that if the oil can’t be seen then it is simply not a

problem anymore.

In Situ Burning

In Situ burning, also known as ISB, is a method that is uses fire to burn off most if not all

the oil that was spilled (Office of Response and Restoration. (2018, December 19). This method

has to be used with the utmost care because there are several factors that could put the workers

and marine life at risk. The reason why is that a fire has to be set in order for the oil to be used up

and there are several risks just from that alone. One of the risks being that if the fire is not set

properly, then the fire has the potential to get out of hand and do more damage to the

environment if it were just to be left alone in the first place. The main responsibility is that the

that the fire has to be controlled and contained especially if the amount of oil o that it doesn’t

spread to any vessels that are helping control the fire or any structures that could be surround the
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site of the spill. Also taking into account the thickness of the oil; otherwise, in-situ burning is not

an option (Nir Barnea. n.d.). If the fire gets out of control it would be puting the marine life and

workers lives at risk. This would result with several lawsuits being brought up due to deaths and

or injuries to workers, or even to wildlife.

Organic Cleaning Alternatives

Seventy percent of the Earth is covered in water, and ninety-seven percent of the Earth's

water is found in the ocean (US Department of Commerce, & National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration. (2013, June 01). Because most of the world is made up of ocean, the protection

of it is vital. There are several “green” alternatives in the making. Oil is already an organic

product, which means that there is most likely another organic solution. Amongst the normal

ways that oil spills are cleaned up, the organic alternatives are too often overlooked. Such

alternatives are like peat moss, hair, and bacteria. What big businesses are missing is an even

cheaper alternative compared to the high expense dispersants. The companies are doing what is

the easiest, and because all that needs to be done is for the absorbent plastic is dump it into the

contaminated area, and no energy has to be used to clean up the dispersant let alone pay workers

to clean it up. All dispersants do is hide the problem so well that the public doesn’t have to

worry about oil spills affecting them. Because they are able to coat the oil and make them

microscopic particles, it’s simply becomes “if you can’t see it, it’s not a problem” type problem.

But in all actuality the plastic is just a coating around the oil and letting it sink to the bottom

(Overton, E. (2018, November 19).

Peat Moss

While some other methods to clean up oil spills involve some extensive amount of

manual labor, peat moss is actually an easily accessible product. So much so that it is commonly
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used by gardeners to add nutrients to their plants. Although one of its uses is a typical fertilizer, it

also has another use as an oil absorbent. An example of its use as an oil absorbent was in 2009 in

Norway. They had a considerably large oil predicament along their shoreline during the summer.

They allowed one of the local environmental scientist, Kallak Torvstrøfabrikk, to use his

developing use of peat moss to clean up the shoreline. The results to his method to use the one

hundred percent organic peat moss “ proved to be worth its weight in gold in a crisis.” (The

Research Council of Norway. (2010, April 15). This method has only been tested in Norway, but

the results from the large test on their shoreline, showed that it is capable of handling a large

amount of oil and cleaning it up with little to no negative effects on the marine environment.

Hair

Hair isn’t just a strong protein strand of keratin is has one important use other than

covering entirety of mammals bodies (Hoffman, M. (n.d.). A use that is has is that it is able to

absorb oil. Hair is a natural absorbent. It contains cracks in each strand that makes it able to

absorb oil through the shafts of the hair (Barton, G. (2018, July 13). Because hair is so easily

accessible, it makes production cost cheap and the hair sponges are easy to make. Human hair is

a natural oil absorbent, it's the reason why we need to use shampoo when we shower. In the

shafts of each individual strands of hair, there are holes and cracks which allows it to have the

ability to absorb three to nine times its weight. While it is able to absorb so much being only hair,

a benefit that it has it is great at saving space because it doesn’t expand like a sponge, but is still

able to hold a lot of oil (Gupta. (2014, April 27). Most oil that is spilled into the ocean rises to the

surface. Because the large surface area that is prevalent in oceanic oil spills, hair would be able

to easily able to absorb the oil that it at the surface. It would not only be more affordable but also

eco friendly because there aren’t any harsh chemicals in it and it is also easily accessible.
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Plant Based Chemicals

Although easily accessible solutions to clean up oil spills are great to use, there are some

cases where the spill needs a little stronger method rather than moss or hair mixing in it. Scientist

have developed and have tested the first eco-friendly herder. The spray that they have developed

has a main ingredient of phytol, which is a molecule that’s found in the genetic makeup of

chlorophyll (Hansman, H. (2015, July 29). The naturally based herder is used for bioremediation

that technically traps the oil instead of encapsulating it into a microscopic particle and letting it

sink to the bottom of the sea like dispersants. Phytol is a interesting compound for the reason

being that, molecules that have phytol for a base are amphiphiles. Amphiphiles are a type a

molecule where the tip of it is hydrophilic (water loving) while the tail of the molecule is

hydrophobic (water-hating). These specific characteristics of phytol based molecules is the

reason why this method is so successful. When the solution is sprayed at the perimeter of the

contaminated area, it is able to trap the oil on the inside and that ultimately helps aid in the

difficulty of collecting the entirety of the oil. In a experiment that was conducted by a team of

researchers in 2015, they compared the phytol based herder compared to the normalized silicone

based herder. In order to make sure that they had a fair trial, they tested both types of solutions in

trays with makeshift oil spills in them. In addition to the oil spill trays, they also tested both

solutions in a variety of scenarios, such as varied salinities and temperatures all conducted in

controlled settings so that the results wouldn’t be skewed in some way (Wheeling, K. (2015,

June 26).

Financial Aspect

There are a multitude of factors that come in to affect the economic value of such crisis as

mass oil spills. For example, when the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill occured, the overall cost
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to clean it up and pay off the lawsuits was about 62 billion dollars (Yurgaitis, D. (2017, January

11). One factor that affects the costs depends on how many tons of oil is spilled as well as where

it was spilled. Another thing that can affect the costs of how much oil spill clean up can be

location, such as if is on land, relatively near the shoreline, or places for offshore drilling. Not

only does the location matter, but in order to figure out the total loss, the type of oil must be

identified. This plays an extremely important role to the costs because some oils is more costly

compared to other such as vegetable oil to crude oil. Once the type of oil that was spilled is

identified, they are able to make a decision on the method they are paying for to clean that type

of oil. Big companies that choose to use dispersants need to understand that they could be saving

a substantial amount of money by using organic alternatives, such as peat moss or hair, that are

easily accessible. If there is a possibility to put more money into a more thorough research in

organic alternatives with a long shelf life to clean up oil spills, the costs to clean up oil spills

would be immense. Developing safer alternatives that don’t destroy the ocean life as well as not

pose a threat to workers or the communities along shorelines would most likely take away the

negative press towards the companies, especially if they are demonstrating their concern of the

betterment of the ocean. In the public’s point of view they are taking responsibility for their

action as well as doing what is best for the marine life to help preserve it.

Legalities

There aren’t any laws that give the oil companies obligations about the clean up methods

that need to be used to clean up oil spills. It’s an overall a grey area that the method(s) is

determined by several factors about the spill and the personal decision made by the responsible

party. There is a very limited amount of laws regarding the clean up methods on how deal with

oil spills. The one that are relevant only discuss the responsibilities and prevention when oil
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spills do happen and that law was made 28 years ago and it is the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. The

Oil Pollution Act of 1990 goes as follows:

“The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990 streamlined and strengthened EPA's ability

to prevent and respond to catastrophic oil spills. A trust fund financed by a tax on oil is

available to clean up spills when the responsible party is incapable or unwilling to do so.

The OPA requires oil storage facilities and vessels to submit to the Federal government

plans detailing how they will respond to large” discharges. EPA has published

regulations for aboveground storage facilities; the Coast Guard has done so for oil

tankers. The OPA also requires the development of Area Contingency Plans to prepare

and plan for oil spill response on a regional scale.” (United States Environmental

Protection Agency. (2018, August 24)

Although there are laws that ensure that oil spills are cleaned up, they don’t necessarily ensure

that the clean up methods are eco-friendly. Like most companies, they go for the fastest solution

to clean up the oil so that way they can disregard the backlash for spilling oil in the first place.

The public has a great influence of how oil spills are treated solely for the fact that they want the

toxic chemicals cleaned up as fast as possible. Therefore, they are putting more pressure on the

companies to fix the mess they made. With all the pressure that is being put on them it’s often

that dispersants is usually the solution that is taken, because it is able to hide the oil faster than

putting actual man labor hours into doing the job fast and of course eco-friendly. But what

companies fail to understand is that with choosing dispersants, it means that they are paying for

more toxic chemicals to be made in order to hide the toxic chemicals they originally spilled.

They also have to take into account that they need to hire workers to dump the chemicals into the

infected area. There are obviously some problems that could arise from doing this, such as the
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death of workers. There was a case where some workers died because they came in contact with

both the oil as well as the cleanup chemical that was used (Cobiella, K. (2010, June 24). That is

when several lawsuits came up and had to be sorted out, which also affects the costs of how

much is spent on

Localities

Although oil spills don’t directly affect Virginia’s coastlines, it does have an affect on our

economy. Gas normally fluctuates a couple cents every day or week depending on the state of the

oil industry (Amadeo, K. (2018, October 29). There is a possibility that it could go up

dramatically if there were to be a mass oil spills in on of the main import countries that the U.S.

gets their oil from such as Canada, Saudi Arabia, or Mexico, just to name a few (U.S. Energy

Information Administration(n.d.). While Virginia has never been on the list of such states and

countries, although Virginia used to have three crude oil refineries but have all been closed in

previous years (Oil Refining in Virginia (2012). Because Virginia is and was never a main oil

distributor, we’ve only been susceptible to small oil spills which there has been some instances

where minor oil spills have occured. In January 2018, there was an incident where a train that

was carrying soybean oil ran off the tracks and spilled a ten gallons in the New River in

Roanoke, Virginia. The soybean oil was labeled non-hazardous and was cleaned up in a matter of

weeks. This oil spill was so minor it only made the news in Roanoke. In another event, in

Campbell County, which is south of Lynchburg, a significant amount of heating oil was spilled

into a pond. The public was obviously concerned with whether or not it was going to be cleaned

up and if so, how fast the oil was going to be cleaned up. Another concern that would’ve

probably came up was if the spill would be affect their home life such as, their health, children’s

health, and food sources. The company had to close off the pond and several professionals had
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to show up so they were able to see how hazardous the chemical is and took immediate action to

clean it up as soon as possible (Gangloff, M. (2018, January 15).

Conclusion

The main cause of oil spills is that the whole world depends on them to run their

countries, but not all of them already have oil in their country so this is when the problem starts

to arise when other countries need oil imported. Because the world is so dependent on oil, only

few regions of the world that carry the majority of the Earth’s oil, so much that they are

practically gold mines for the resource. Like most countries, their oil is imported from other

countries. But the world is far from stopping the use of oil to power their countries, till then the

only solution is to be prepared with safe clean up method. Then once a spill happens the solution

to how it is going to be dealt with is soon to arise. The risks that are connected to the regular

methods that are used to clean up oil spills are extensive and don’t have to happen, and there

shouldn’t be an excuse. Especially with the technological advances that are happening everyday

to better the safety of everyone, it should be taken advantage of. All of the original methods take

a significant amount of money, time and effort to be executed with several other risks depending

on the severity of every scenario. The choice is simple, the organic alternatives such as peat

moss, hair and plant-based chemicals are the solutions to oceanic oil spills, especially with the

inevitability that more will occur in the future.

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